In modern computational applications, a power budget of a processor may be a factor to consider in evaluation of overall effectiveness of the processor. In a computationally demanding environment, power constraints, e.g., battery capacity, length of time between battery recharge, thermal restrictions, and other factors may play a role in processor effectiveness.
Power-down of a processor when the processor is not in use can help to achieve operation of the processor within a designed power budget. In multipurpose applications, resources may be spread across different entities within the processor and it may not be possible to selectively power-down selected resources that are not used in an active application. Hence, power management of the processor may be performed in an “all or nothing” way, which may limit power savings opportunities to cases where there are no tasks to be accomplished.